The Blue Diamond Group has increased its garden centre portfolio to 39 with the acquisition of Blackdown, near Taunton in Somerset. 

Last month, following on from the acquisition of Mere Park, Alan Roper told GTN that he had two further acquisitions due to complete in January (one of them in Surrey) plus a scheduled refurb on an additional site in the Westcountry, which is now confirmed as Blackdown Garden Centre in Somerset.

Read the full story in the current issue of GTN below where Alan talks about his growth targets for Bue Diamond, the improvements in turnover of the centres purchased from Wyevale, his views on Little Dobbies and news of the Blue Diamond Awards for 2022...

Not resting on their laurels after successfully trading through the pandemic, garden centres across the country are Thinking Outside of the Box to take advantage of new market opportunities and solve current trading issues.

Read stories in the current issue of GTN about the rise of Little Dobbies, The Plnat Room by Camden Garden Centre and Hillmounts' expansion from Northern Ireland to Cheshire...

Haskins Garden Centres has been announced as Costa’s National Partner of the Year out of more than 80 partners across the UK...

With Christmas 2021 behind us, the UK’s festive and gift industry can start planning for 2022 celebrations with the first port of call, Harrogate Christmas & Gift which takes place from 16^th to 19^th January 2022 at the Harrogate Convention Centre...

Outdoor living items continued to come out top in the Garden Centre Association’s Barometer of Trade for November – beating Christmas for poll position. GCA Chief Executive, Iain Wylie. said: “There’s been a real buzz in 2021 around entertaining outdoors and a welcoming garden has become vital..."

The Horticultural Trades Association reported strong Christmas sales for garden centres. The organisation’s Garden Retail Monitor shows overall sales figures in the last four weeks leading up to Christmas Eve up on 2020 by between 10% and 20%...

Spring Fair, the UK's most diverse, vibrant, and exciting wholesale marketplace for home, gift, sourcing and Moda as the fourth fashion destination incorporating footwear and the Jewellery & Watch Edit, confirms it will take place from 6-9 February 2022 in Halls 1-8 at NEC Birmingham, as planned...

For many people a visit to Keukenhof is on their 2022 wish list. The flower exhibition’s staff have done their utmost to create the most beautiful spring garden in the world. We are looking forward to being able to welcome visitors again...

Happy New Year to you all.  We hope you all had a good and safe festive period and are now looking forward to an exciting 2022.

Since New Year the GTN gnomes have been beavering away to compile the Top 100 stories read in GTN Xtra last year as our review of 2021.

During 2021 we published in excess of 2,500 stories in GTN Xtra which was opened 390,397 times by 34,334 unique readers who viewed 856,595 pages.  Added to that are the pages of GTN magazines published through the year which have been read on line almost 33,000 times (you can catch up with any you may have missed using the links on the bottom right hand side of this GTN Xtra edition) as well as the many thousands of readers of the printed copies.

We've thoroughly enjoyed bringing you all the news, views and ideas during 2021 and we hope you found them useful and informative.  Here's to an even greater 2022!